Top NBC Reporter Goes Utterly Blank on Live TV When GOP Rep Quotes Obama to Her

Nearly everyone remembers the moment when then-President Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic five years ago at the global nuclear security summit in South Korea leaning over to tell then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate after the U.S. presidential election.

Well, nearly everybody except top NBC reporter Katy Tur, who doesn’t have a clue, according to NewsBusters.

During a discussion Monday with Florida Rep. Francis Rooney, a Republican, regarding President Donald Trump’s aspiration to foster a better working relationship with Russia, Tur wondered whether he would “treat Russia in as tough a way as his predecessors did.”

Advertisement - story continues below

This bizarre viewpoint did not go unnoticed by Rooney, who replied, “(I)t was Obama that leaned over to Putin and said, ‘I’ll have a little more flexibility to give you what you want after the re-election.'”

In Tur’s defense, Rooney did misspeak slightly. Obama had promised flexibility to Medvedev, not Putin. As was reported at the time by Reuters, however, the promise was made only two months before Putin was slated to take over the presidency. And because Obama’s assurance pertained to the period after the U.S. election, at which point Putin would be in power, it was therefore relevant to him and not to Medvedev.

Advertisement - story continues below

Instead of at the very least fact-checking Rooney’s misstatement, though, Tur just drew a blank, as can be seen in the video below:

Keep in mind that even the notoriously left-leaning Snopes fact-checking website has labeled the claim that “President Obama was overheard over a hot microphone telling President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia he would have ‘more flexibility’ to negotiate with Putin after the election” as true.

There is simply no denying that this happened, though Tur did not have a clue — and this despite her seemingly impressive resume over at WNBC.

What remains debatable is whether Tur’s ignorance is an indictment of just her own ignorance or of the entire liberal mainstream media’s lack of knowledge vis-à-vis anything save “social justice,” racial politics and Donald Trump’s fictional ties to Nazism.